Moltbot briefly becomes the favorite AI chatbot on the internet after a frenzied redesign
- Moltbot is a newly-innovated helper for the open source AI Cloudbot
- Moltbot works within messaging apps to perform tasks
- The reproduction followed the trademark warning and caused a wave of chaos, stolen handles, and fake crypto scams.
A promising open source AI assistant called Clawdbot turned into a viral sensation before quickly being rebranded as Moltbot due to concerns that the trademarks might lead to attempted scams and fraud.
After the chatbot reached tens of thousands of GitHub stars and attracted praise from top AI researchers and investors, Anthropic raised trademark concerns that its name sounded too similar to the company’s chatbot, Claude.
Moltbot’s developer, Austrian engineer Peter Steinberger, chose the new name after hearing about Anthropic. He pulled the trigger in the middle of the night, but that didn’t stop bots from quickly grabbing abandoned public handles or opportunists from issuing fake “Clawdbot” crypto tokens. Insomniac Steinberger even accidentally renamed his personal GitHub account instead of the project before fixing the error.
There is a reason for all chaos. Moltbot’s AI-centric pitch that the average person can use to organize their digital life has obvious appeal. Its design should make it behave the way people imagined an AI assistant a decade ago, before they were trained to lower their expectations. It exists within the tools you already use and promises to handle the tasks you keep putting off.
Moltbot works locally, with the user choosing an AI model to power it, and communicates through standard messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, iMessage, and Slack. It keeps a long-term record of your preferences, projects, and chat history. If you say you want to start eating, it remembers. If you asked it last week to follow a routine, it will remind you today. If you integrate multiple projects across applications and services, they can help automate them.
This integration is what makes the tool different from standard AI chatbots. You can tell Moltbot to condense your inbox, file documents, organize your notes, generate reports, or nudge you when deadlines come up, and it can integrate with third-party applications.
Moltbot mania
When the project was first launched under the name Clawdbot, it appeared to be a very simple way to achieve the kind of agent AI that companies like OpenAI and Google were discussing. Interest multiplied, and suddenly people were talking about a small open source side project as an example of a new era of personal automation.
Then came the request to change the name. And so, a kind of digital slapstick approach. Within seconds of Steinberger announcing the rebrand, the bots found the old name. An unrelated crypto token called $CLAWD appeared almost immediately and rose to a ridiculous market cap before cracking.
Scam accounts claim to be part of the engineering team. And the widely shared image of a lobster with a human face, which was created when Steinberger jokingly asked Moltbot to “grow” his mascot, was mistaken for the real thing by many people for a while.
But people love a scrappy project trying to survive its sudden popularity. They also like a mascot with meme skills. Not that Moltbot is for everyone. Because AI can, with permission, control parts of your computer and access sensitive personal data, caution is recommended, and you should not install third-party plugins without checking them.
For many non-technical AI chatbot users, Moltbot is more of a harbinger than a tool you can use right now. Big tech companies have been publicly chasing the dream of “AI agents” for months. Moltbot is one of the first real examples that the community can touch, even if most people won’t use it on their devices. It shows a future where digital assistants not only answer questions but actively save your calendar, prioritize your messages, and coordinate your digital life. The lobster mascot is optional.
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